The Customer Experience Blueprint: How Customer Insight Drives Innovation with Aransas Savas and Dave Norton of Stone Mantel

Narrator: [: 00:00:00

Peter Bronstein: welcome, welcome.

e Ask Brian Radio Show on KHS: 1220

And each week we interview [00:01:00] somebody that will either A, teach us something about a business skill, could be Facebook advertising, could be inventory control for a business, could be how to do accounting, something where you can learn something from business that way, We have somebody that's created a business and we can learn how they went from, Hey, I just came up with this concept to, I have a thriving business.

I'm making lots and lots of money, lots and lots of clients. And how did I go from A to Z? And that's what we try to do each and every week. But, our show is based on the name Ask Brian, A S K B R I E N, and everybody, for the last seven and a half years, seven and a half years later, they still are asking, why is the show called Ask Brian?

re named Brian, it was B R Y [: 00:02:00

So, Tracy. Explain this. I'm

Traci DeForge: befuddled. Oh, I'm sure that you are, but I'm sure it has nothing to do with the EADS. Oh, did I say that out loud? Okay, I'm sorry. I am excited about the EADS today because we actually have an E in our subject matter, but I'll just leave the T's hanging there for that. But we are all about the EADS.

You know, we're without our female estrogen engineer today, but we are still celebrating our engineer. So hello, Andrew.

Dave Norton: Hello.

felt center of the Ask Bryan [: 00:03:00

And an expert by definition is someone who's invested more than 10, 000 hours in their business category or niche. And I know for sure that I stopped counting a long time ago for myself and Peter and our guest today, but I happen to have the luxury of knowing personally, have well more than 10, 000 hours in their business.

Experience and expertise. So we get to hear a lot more from them about that. And yes, I mentioned education, but I'll say it again, because it's probably the most important E of all of our E's. And for that, I just am very enthusiastic about it. How about you, Peter? I'm excited.

And there goes the eardrum.

asm? Where's the enthusiasm? [: 00:04:00

Traci DeForge: Yeah, I said I had enthusiasm, but it just got squashed.

Peter Bronstein: You need passion. You want to be successful. You need passion.

Traci DeForge: But since we have not just one expert, but two experts with us today, I think we should just jump right in and make it the introduction because we are going to be talking all about customer experience strategy today.

And you can't get a better even that.

Peter Bronstein: But I thought that every show you like to have that thing about Greece, right? What is that? From that movie, Grease?

Traci DeForge: Oh, my favorite E! Well, thank you, because, see, I didn't actually say my own favorite E last week, because you weren't here. But, yes, based on the big love for Olivia Newton John and Grease Lightning, I will say that our entire team here at the Ask Brian radio show is electrified!

Yeah!

obody warned them, Thank you [: 00:05:00

So, let's start with Arantis. Can you give me a little background before you started working at the current company, what your background was? Absolutely. I

Aransas: actually started my adult life in theater, which it turns out is a really wonderful groundwork for experience strategy. After getting my master's in theater, I ended up working at Weight Watchers and leading experience strategy there.

le to help translate them as [: 00:06:00

W. For category leaders and lots of other domains from banking and health care all the way over to retail and travel.

Peter Bronstein: Okay, we're going to be back with you in a minute, but I just want to get a little background from Dave. Dave, if you can give a little background prior to starting your company and then also a brief analysis of how and why you started the company and then we're going to switch back to.

Harassment

Dave Norton: sure. So I'm Dave Norton. I'm the founder and principal at stone mantle. We're going into our 20th year as a company and we do a lot of great work. For a lot of different brands that you would be familiar with. Companies like Marriott and. Royal Caribbean, but also banks that you're like truest and telecom companies like T Mobile and just a wide range of different organizations that are trying to.

create better [: 00:07:00

Peter Bronstein: Prior to starting the company, if you can just say, you know, what your background was before you started the company and then the reason why you started.

: So I started the company in: 2005

But I've always been interested in. Experience strategy and how experiences are created. And one of my early career moments was working alongside the author of the experience economy, Joe Pine, who is pretty famous worldwide for really introducing this idea of experiences as economic value. Um, That piqued my interest and I just kind of built up my skills and capabilities first with the other company.

n company, I just kept going [: 00:08:00

Peter Bronstein: So what exactly did you do for, I mean, you mentioned names out there, Marriott, all these companies, what's your primary focus? What do you do for these companies? Are you brand awareness, brand reputation, feedback, surveys, publicity? What exactly is your category when you say strategy?

Thank you.

Dave Norton: We typically do primary research with their customers to identify what are the most meaningful experiences that they're having with the company, why they're having those experiences, or what could be the most meaningful experiences with their company. And then we turn those insights into strategic goals and objectives that the organization needs to go.

grounds and expertise in all [: 00:09:00

Peter Bronstein: Uh, Rancis, I have a question for you. So, if somebody was interested in wanting to hire you guys, I imagine you're going to have to do a big questionnaire and get some information. What's your goal for a new company that comes in? And says, you know, I want to use your services. What exactly are you going to go over with them?

Or what exactly are you going to come up with a plan? What exactly are you going to do for them?

Aransas: Yeah. I mean, we certainly do extensive research on behalf of our customers, but where we really begin is an effort to understand what their customer really wants them to do for them. And how they can meet the customer where they are to deliver value and a contextually unique and valuable way.

what do I mean by that? You [: 00:10:00

And how they can deliver maximum value in the moment that they are needed. So you'll hear us talk about context over and over again in this and situation. And what we mean by that is really in essence, meeting the customer where they are to provide that value instead of kind of offering value into a void, which is I think where we find friction and frustration with so many of the companies that we hire.

Peter Bronstein: And do you do this just in an external environment for the companies, but you actually, you know, dig deep into the company culture and the employees that are working at that company to find these things out?

Aransas: Yeah. So for [: 00:11:00

And the most elegant and sustainable solutions for companies really do hit on all three, but how we usually find those answers. Certainly service providers have an experience are uniquely valuable to this exploration because they tend to have a depth of insight into how the customer is using a product or service, what they really want out of it, what they love about it, what they get irritated by.

And so we, we often find ourselves talking to service providers of different sorts that said, nobody knows better than the customer. And we have some pretty unique methodologies for talking to customers to extract. Hidden insights from them, right? You hear it over and over again when you talk to people about human beings.

[: 00:12:00

Yes, I agree. They don't know the form of what they want, but they can tell us a lot about what they need their products to do. And if we meet the need and innovative ways, and we've probably struck gold. And so what did Henry Ford do? He gave them a faster horse. It just happened to be automated and engine and powered by a big, strong engine that met the job to be done, which was to get him from point A to point B.

. So what percentage of your [: 00:13:00

Dave Norton: The vast majority of our clients Are companies that have multiple channels. In fact, that's one of the biggest challenges that they deal with. So they are, you know, they've got a retail location. They've got partnerships. They've got online solutions, and they're trying to manage this very broad set of.

And varied sense of engagement with customers deliver solutions. So, to your point, that's a lot of companies today. You do some work with companies that are solely online or solely digital, but, uh, the majority have multiple channels up there that we're delivering from.

and feedback, you're dealing [: 00:14:00

There's certain people that, okay, I'll stay online and give feedback. Or if it's a bad experience, I'll respond. Even if it's a super duper experience, I may or may not. Bad experiences, though, I find are more likely to be responsive. So how do you filter out and try to, you know, say, oh, you know, if I got, you know, 500 people responded and 300 of them say all this stuff is bad and, you know, 50 say it's good and the others don't even.

You know, deal with it. How do you determine whether or not it's really a problem problem

a particular challenge, but [: 00:15:00

Is to help companies to describe the unknown opportunities that they can't immediately see, or that even their customers aren't really describing. So we've spent a lot of time in people's homes, talking to them. We do a lot of observational research. We use all kinds of different research techniques.

Technically it's called triangulation, where you have multiple techniques that you're using to gather data, to identify new opportunity areas. So a lot of the things that we do fall more into the innovation camp than they do into the problem resolution camp.

Peter Bronstein: Now, I don't know if this is confidential. I don't know who's going to answer this question for us.

it? I don't know if there's [: 00:16:00

Dave Norton: Do you want me to go first, Orances?

Peter Bronstein: That's fine. Go

Dave Norton: for it, Dave. Gosh, we have worked on so many different projects over the years. If you've gone to the Royal Caribbean's private island, Kekuke, you've seen some of our work there. We help to Do all of the strategy work for cocoa K and all of the research associated with that's their private island.

e everything from helping to [: 00:17:00

There's a wide range. We've helped particularly famous television channels think about the future of streaming technology. So, we cover a lot of different topics, all of which are related to this idea that Narancis was talking about, where we identify what is the new job to be done, the new opportunity, the new need that the customer has, and what does that mean for the company.

garment and use it to create [: 00:18:00

Traci DeForge: All right. Well, I want to talk about the pathway of the customer experience journey. I know as a business owner myself, I feel marginally obsessed with customer service, but I also feel like that as a business owner in today's competitive landscape and market saturation and all the things that are going on in business climate today, that a business owner should be obsessed with client experience and client service.

But if someone was coming to work with you. Where should they even begin in terms of like a focus or redirect or paying attention to their customer experience journey?

ut companies that are really [: 00:19:00

So, there's kind of like 2 different groups out there. There's the companies that are trying their hardest to be as responsive as they possibly can to what customers say they want. So, they'll send out the survey, and they'll ask customers questions, and, um, Try to respond positively. There's nothing wrong with that.

have what we call a point of [: 00:20:00

And by a point of view, I mean, they have some kind of insight into the near future needs of their customers and they've taken that insight and they've internalized it as an organization. They've applied it to their business model, and they're able to execute against that insight in such a way that the customer is like, yes, that's exactly what I think I want for this particular situation.

And so they're able to be ahead of the game to actually anticipate what customers will want. So first step, I think one of the first steps perhaps is to establish your company's point of view. Yeah.

Aransas: I mean, I think one of the questions we're asked quite often in this work is experience strategist. That sounds really cool.

erienced strategist? And the [: 00:21:00

But the thing all these people have in common is that they are doing exactly what Dave is describing. They are collecting the data and sometimes that is trended data, like what's happening in the world for our customer, what's happening in the world for our category, and sometimes it's really specific to how a customer is using their product Where are the customers really finding value and what they believe based on all this data is going to drive value in the near future.

nization to get everybody on [: 00:22:00

I think so often we think about what it takes to succeed, especially in larger organizations, but it's truly in any organization that once you have this data, it has to become really important to the organization. And you have to rally around it and design toward it. And that's so much of what we, we take our clients through, whether we're doing individual project work with them, or if they're working with us and our collaborative program, or we bring lots of companies together to answer big hairy questions, or even in our certification program, where people are becoming certified in experience strategy at the end of the day, they're taking home.

nization on board to make it [: 00:23:00

They're like, well, you know, we could, we could solve this one tiny problem in this moment. But does, does it fit for where the customer is going? Will it matter in two years? And that's a big part, of course, of why we create our annual trend report. To help companies along to make better strategic decisions for their customers.

ch that needs to be involved [: 00:24:00

So I think business owners are so busy running the day to day and don't necessarily have full research teams to support them. And so it's often hard to basically deliver what is right in the moment, but then also have this futuristic expectation approach, which I love. But what would be just one tip that Business Center could start today that would help them with that future expectation?

what's going on in the world [: 00:25:00

And if we can kind of keep those two lenses. We can keep that future focused point of view.

Traci DeForge: I love that. Yeah. So I want to continue on the idea of research and what we can do at any phase of our entrepreneurial journey. Right. So I had an opportunity to be, uh, at an industry interview for With Stephen Bartlett, who, if you don't know who he is, everyone that listens to the show knows that I'm really deep into the podcasting space.

But Stephen Bartlett is the host of a podcast called the diary of a CEO. And I share this because it was one of the most fascinating customer experience strategies that I may have heard in a long time, which is he has an entire team that's focused on research. That because ultimately his audience is his customer, right?

somehow. I have no idea how [: 00:26:00

And the guest's favorite song is playing, and the guest automatically just goes, Oh, I love this song! Like, it's a happy accident! And what it does is it obviously just, like, immediately puts the guest at ease. And there are a hundred other things that he talked about during that industry interview that He does based on his research team and to create the most optimal experience for his guests that ultimately translates into an amazing experience for his audience.

people, how can we provide [: 00:27:00

Aransas: I'll jump in and say that I first heard a story like that when I was working with a team at Eleven Madison Park. The illustrious restaurant in New York City known far and wide for the research that it does on individual guests, something that many in the industry have now taken to doing as it is losing and listening and most recently, folks probably thought if they were watching the bear on FX, there's a great scene in there where they delight somebody with a, with a A, um, a Chicago hot dog.

And that was the first story really that I heard of 11 Madison was a server overhearing a customer saying, Oh, I came to New York city and I got everything except one of those dirty water dogs. And they came back and plated and a New York city street hot dog for them beautifully and served it at their restaurant.

[: 00:28:00

They give them a welcome home gift. But instead of giving them a generic welcome home guest, they really prioritize having their service team listen closely to the customer and provide that moment of real delight and relationship building by giving them something that's meaningful for them. And you can imagine what that does for their word of mouth.

ou have more opportunity for [: 00:29:00

And how would you measure success around that goal? Because a lot of what we're doing is helping with transformational journeys. So a customer, if they're on a transformational journey, probably has something they want out of it. So that's really important data for you to collect. How do you play that back to them?

rvice, our favorite question [: 00:30:00

Is, was this experience that you had with me, was it time well spent and understanding whether or not the time your customer spent with you felt like time that was well spent? That is really good data because I can promise you if the answer is no, there, you've got really great data that you need to fix something.

But if the answer is yes. Then you've got some early data for understanding what's working.

Traci DeForge: Well, I personally go inspired by this conversation because as I mentioned before, I am obsessed with customer service and customer experiences. So I could continue this conversation all day. I know our listeners would absolutely love to continue the conversation with the two of you.

How can they make that happen?

is co, not com. And, uh, you [: 00:31:00

That goes into our certifications. It's fully accessible and completely free, and we would love to have you guys subscribe and to begin a conversation with you there. It is just a wealth of information and then follow us on LinkedIn, whether it's at Stone Mantle. Uh, we're Dave Norton or Rancid Stafford.

Traci DeForge: And I personally just want to say that Experience Strategy is one of my most favorite podcasts. So if you haven't checked it out, you do want to check it out. And when you go to StoneMantle. co, be sure to sign up for their upcoming webinar because if you have a chance to have access to David Oran's show, take it.

hat we've given today, don't [: 00:32:00

And I'm going to turn it back over to you, Peter.

Peter Bronstein: Well, thank you, Trace. So, I have a question for Dave. What was the biggest challenge that you've had to deal with in your company in the 20 years you've been running it?

Dave Norton: Are you asking in terms of our biggest client challenge that we've had to deal with?

No, the biggest challenge

Peter Bronstein: to Well, both. We have about Three minutes. So we're gonna do each one first. Okay. Well first let's do the biggest challenge the company And then we'll do the biggest challenge of a customer and then what the solution was Okay,

Dave Norton: so in: 2008

And then the next day they were back on the project. So that was a hairy time. That was a time when if you made mistakes with people's financial lives, it would destroy your company. And so we had a lot of late night calls from a lot of people. Companies that were a lot of other banks as well. Personally, the, you know, for our little company, we're a boutique consultancy.

And our biggest challenge is [: 00:34:00

And then when things, when companies are not doing well, they're going to be focused on basic blocking and tackling. And so we have to have a business model that allows for that as well.

Peter Bronstein: I like to use blocking tackling because tonight is opening day for NFL.

Dave Norton: Right.

Peter Bronstein: Uh, Rancis, we have about less than a minute left, so, uh, if you want to go over the biggest challenge that you think any client had at the company that you overcame, but we do have one minute max.

what the customer wants, but [: 00:35:00

Peter Bronstein: Well, thank you very much for listening to the Ask Brian radio show on KHS 1220 and 98. 1 FM.

us every Thursday on KTHS AM: 1220

That's ask b r i e n. com.